Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters22 Jul 2019

How Kim Jong Un Smuggles His Luxury Cars into North Korea

North Korea is under the world's most stringent set of international sanctions. This includes, since 2006, a ban on exporting of luxury goods to North Korea.

This has not stopped Kim Jong Un from amassing a fleet of high end cars. He is regularly seen in Mercedes and Rolls Royces both in North Korea and on his trips abroad.

And now a fascinating report in the New York Times offers some key insights into how Kim Jong Un smuggles his luxury cars into North Korea.

Reporters from the New York Times teamed up with researchers at the non profit Center for Advanced Defense Studies to track two Mercedes Maybachs from their manufacture in Germany to the streets of Pyongyang. The route was a circuitous one, involving multiple shipping vessels docking in at least five countries over the course of several months. But using open source data and satellite imagery, the reporters and researchers were able to paint a pretty clear picture of how those cars ended up in North Korea. And in so doing, they reveal how the North Korean regime is able to evade some sanctions.

On the line with me to discuss his reporting is one of the journalists on the story, Christoph Koettl. He is a visual investigations journalist with the New York Times video team, specializing in geospatial and open-source research.

We spend most of this conversation discussing the step-by-step journey of these cars. And I think going through each leg of this trip is important because this story reveals a weakness in international sanctions in general and on North Korea in particular. And that's this: which is that that are only robust to the extent that countries are willing and able to enforce them.

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